Photographer Dan Green has been snapping Cardiff’s characters for two years now. He tells Gavin Allen about his latest exhibition, Big Little City.

ANY artist wants their work to be enjoyed but photographer Dan Green was so overwhelmed by the response to his last project it has spawned a sequel and may even grow internationally.

A year ago Green’s portraiture exhibition Cardiff:Characters, which captured the city’s recognisable eccentrics and much-loved faces, was staged at The Old Library in The Hayes and later moved onto A Shot In The Dark in Roath.

But Green found that while the exhibition proved popular, it regularly stimulated the same response from many visitors.

“People were always saying, ‘you’ve got him or her, but what about this character?’ and I ended up with more than 200 suggestions,” says Green, himself Cardiff born.

Green’s new exhibition, Big Little City, opens at Milgi, City Road, Roath at 7.30pm tonight and continues through August. It is a multi-media cavalcade of Cardiff souls suggested by members of the public as the photographer continues to capture the spirit of the city through its people.

“The first exhibition was my personal view on Cardiff whereas this was ‘assigned’ to me by other people,” says Green, whose previous exhibition earned him commissions from Welsh National Opera among others.

“I was inundated with suggestions – I’m probably halfway through them – and it’s an ongoing project.

“This time we have a lot more people from outside the city centre, lots from Butetown for instance, but it’s because everyone knows someone who just brightens their day that little bit, not just eccentrics, but the girl at the local bar or a bingo hall caller.

“These people are the unsung heroes who give a city its soul.”

Rather than calling the exhibition Cardiff: Characters 2, Green has re-branded the project Big Little City because he wants it to travel outside of the Welsh capital, particularly to Cardiff’s twin cities.

“Cardiff is twinned with places like Xiamen and Lugansk and I realised I know nothing about these places – why are we twinned with them? – so what I’d like to do ideally is make those cities part of this project too, get to know its people a little better,” explains Green, who exhibited in Washington as part of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival earlier this summer.

“It would be great if, for instance, I had a photo of a Cardiff bus driver but also a bus driver from all these other cities too because it’s about bringing people together. At the opening of Cardiff: Characters we had all the subjects of the photographs together for the first time, more than 250 people, and it was brilliant.

“Cardiff is the tractor beam that sucks us all together, but it could work equally in any other city.”

Big Little City is an interactive event and Green hopes the public will use the likes of Twitter and Facebook to comment on the work, which includes audio-visual exhibits and a giant montage of almost 300 people mounted on the wall at Milgi.

“Milgi has been a godsend for people like me because the difficult thing is getting your work shown, particularly when you are doing this without funding or sponsorship,” he says.

“It’s got to the point where I can’t keep funding this myself without any money coming back but I am very passionate about completing this project because it helps me feel part of Cardiff and I think it helps other people feel part of the city too. That’s what’s great about this, it isn’t high art, it’s about connecting people.”